Just ordered it, YAY more things to test...yes i am a geek haha

All top advice and you will get there.

That said, if you can add some mature sponge or other media to your filter, it will massively speed up the cycle. I was struggling one way or another for a long time, and after adding sponge from an established tank cycled in little over a week.

Tom

Finally at last the ammonia is down to 1 ppm :) just dosed it back up using the calculator

From the test kit the gH is 143 ppm and the kH is 71 ppm, do these seem ok?

Not added the bicarbonate yet, thought id test it first and let you now the results of the gh and kh

Those convert to 8 degrees gH and 4 degrees kH in German degrees of hardness, which is how you will mostly see these expressed. Assuming those are the current levels in the tank the cycle should continue without adjusting the kH.

Check the levels of both from the tap too as it's good to know whether there's any raising of either in the tank from substrate/rock etc.

With a gH of 8, kH over 3 and pH of 7 from the tap you have a very wide range of species to choose from

I started out my current tank using BioMature. In the end I had to switch to using plain old household Ammonia. I think the problem with the BioMature is it is really, really easy to overdose the tank, especially if it is quite small.

I suppose warning bells should have gone off in my head when I had to do some maths to find the right dosage (I was below the scale!).

Quick update and i think the tank is ready, ammonia is at 0 and so is the nitrites, although the nitrites never risen. Have been dosing everyday and the past two days the ammonia has been at 0, so think it might be time to add some little ones :)

Whats the best fish to start with you guys n gals?

Well that depends on what fish you like Look for mainly soft water fish (there are thousands) and see what takes your fancy. Your water is suitable for a lot of different species, but for starters most Tetras, Rasboras, South American Cichlids, Corydoras, smaller Plecs, Gouramis will be happy with those levels of hardness and pH.


Do retest the nitrates though and make sure you give the second bottle a very vigorous 30 seconds shaking and a hefty whack on a table before adding to the test tube and then shake that for a full minute so hard that you feel like your arm will drop off. There's something not quite right if you've really got no nitrates so proceed with caution and restest before buying any fish.

o crap havent tested the nitrates for a while, just did and it hurt :) its at 40 ppm, does that seem ok?

That's much better If you didn't have a reasonable level of nitrates it would suggest there was a problem with the cycle. Nitrates are the final product of the cycle and can only be removed by water changes, so if there were none it would be very odd.

You need to keep feeding the tank with ammonia until the day before you get your first fish in order to keep the bacteria alive. The day before first stocking do a large water change to reduce nitrates to 20ppm or so. At the moment, with 40ppm, that means a 50% change.

HTH